Get Over It
by Clarenova
Summary: Clambrithe and Tren A'varn - two unlikely hares of unlikely mindsets, sitting by the fire, watching the sky. The history of Clambrithe through another's eyes. An in-depth social commentary on Salamandastron and its hares. Prequel to TMOI.
1. Prologue to Defeat

::Get Over It:: 

Disclaimer: Not mine, never was, and the way things are looking, never will be. 

A/N: Yes, well, haven't been a very good writer recently, yes? So here's my retort to my own muses for now; a little drabble, again part of the Series Which Has No Name. This one is not so dark as the other few that precede it, but still hints at the constant madness. Clambrithe returns! 

* 

It was sunny that day. I remember it well. Very sunny. The kind of sunny where the skies are their at their cliched best: blue, cloudless, unbearably beautiful. One needs to look to the sky sometimes. You forget the true colours and hues of the cirrus-painted horizons; sometimes you forget that the sky does not always stay a standard shade of azure, sapphire, cerulean blue. But that day, that day was a day unaccountable in the annals of days upon endless days that had come before it, that eventually came after it. For the moment, the skies were blue. And the sun shone. 

I remember it well. 

I was with Major Clambrithe's patrol. He used to have one, when he was alive, just before his promotion to major. They say he jumped to his death, but nobeast really knows. The uppers never talk of it, and when we buried the mysterious human-turned-vermin, or whatever she was, we seemed to have buried Clambrithe right alongside her, whether metaphorically so or not. 

I miss him. He used to understand, understand as well as anybeast could possibly understand. 

He understood me when I finally did it. He was standing right there beside me when I did it, too. He watched, watched with those damnable blue eyes of his, mirroring the sky yet so bloody cold in contrast, so god forsaken and detached and absolutely lifeless. He stood beside me, watching, as I did it. He did not even put his blade by mine, did not even bother to lift a helping paw. He just waited. I will never be sure if that was his form of support, or if that was his own personal, morbid way of reminding himself of innocence lost, but oh, the agony and the ecstasy. 

Now I understand what they mean by obsession, addiction, revelation. 

The sky was blue. So were his eyes. 

I forgot, that day. I forgot to look to the skies, forgot to look to each star at night and wonder how they shone. I forgot to do all the things that I used to love doing, I forgot how to forget and I forgot how to remember. I engaged in the Moment, and the Moment swallowed me whole, drowning me in every emotion, in every sensuous torture of madness and more madness and madness again. I never stopped living in the Moment. I never can. I would go insane. 

I think that's what Clambrithe did. And for that, I say he is a fool. 

Who can turn away from this? We can smile, certainly, we can laugh. We can play our foolish little games, with our leverets, with our friends, with ourselves. Try to fool the world, fool each other, fool our own inner conscience. It would never work if we bothered to be retrospective, contemplative philosophers. Death is a topic best left for those who never engage in it, who never feel its intimate brush, who never learn to savour it, to love it, to be it. 

I became death that day. 

And when I pulled my blade - soaked for the first time in my life with the lifeblood of my enemy, your enemy, our enemy - out of the shuddering carcass beneath me, I froze and the world became but a series of minute jerks on my nervous system, action and reaction and condescension. Who wanted life, who wanted life, who could possibly want life when there is such death? Who would want tattered cotton, knowing that he lives, when one can have rich velvet, knowing one lives more in that moment than the pathetic example who fell before him? Who could possibly want to settle for knowing that one can survive, when one could know that he survives last amongst other survivors, other refugees, other victims of this perilous, perilous, damned _perilous_ society of ours? Of yours. Of mine. 

Clambrithe put his paw on my shoulder. I remember staring past him, past his white tunic that somehow never got stained red while my own green one had turned crimson. I remember staring past his rank, _captain, bar bar bar,_ sewn there onto the sleeve for all to see, resplendent in golden glory. Staring past it all into the darkened, golden sky. I never realized that so much time had passed. All I could do was tremble, tremble and attempt not to cry. 

The beast on the ground was dead. And I was alive. 

And I loved that feeling. 

The raw tenderness of your nerves, such sensitivity that you feel born again, receptive to each breath of wind and each glance of sunburst and glory. The shaking of your feet, the grip of your blade, the feeling that denotes that you are _alive_. The colours deepen, and the sounds become rich, and all the universe seems resplendent in a glory that could be only your own, in this glory of knowing that you lived when others died, that you remained standing. That you are alive. That you are alive. 

And Clambrithe knew it. Gods yes, he knew it. He was a premier officer. No officer becomes as decorated as him without first achieving some sort of personal Nivarna, some sort of personal acceptance to life and to death and every little thing in between. He knew how it was to love death and to love life, to be caught in this marriage of sin and of evangelism of the pithy of existence. He knew how it was to love and to hate. He knew it. Yet he just stood there, watching my conversion from saint into sinner, watching me turn from innocence into guilt unknowing. 

I think I cried two tears in that instant: one for myself, and one for the world. Then Clambrithe came over to me, still impassive, still so very cold, and placed his paw on my shoulder. I shook. He had never previously shown such perception of humane depth, such understanding of innate compassion. For an instant, the sky remained blue. 

Then he kicked the many-notched blade of my fallen opponent away, and turned his eyes aside. 

'Get over it.' 

I do not think I ever did. That night before sunset, as I sat shivering by the fire on my watch, Clambrithe came and sat by me. Why, I doubt I will ever know: I was only a runner, a young male leveret fresh off the ranks and thrust into one of the most active patrols because of a good domestic record and plenty of youth just waiting to be deconstructed. His tunic was off, leaving just his undershirt, and when I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye, I could almost pretend that he was any other normal hare, any other normal hare who had never taken a life and took no pleasure from it. 

Clambrithe just sat there, with one knee raised and bent and the other curled beneath him. He rested his arms over that bent knee of his, allowing long, calloused fingers to brush the ground just so, just so, and his fur rippled in the dusky wind. He looked ahead, beyond the fires, into them, somewhere, somewhere I had not, at that time, yet reached. He was not Clambrithe then, oh no, he was Jonathan, and Jonathan was never a secure man to begin with. 

'Sir,' I remember myself saying, and I questioned warily as to his well-being, just as any proper subordinate officer should. 

'Tren A'varn,' he had sighed, and he turned those cursed eyes of his on me. I swallowed and turned away. What did I see? 

Guilt. Rumination. Abhorrence. Helplessness. Despair. 

No, I never wanted to see my reflection in his eyes again. 

'Sir.' I offered as a form of closure, and we, just the two of us, sat there, back to back, watching the sun set in the West, always in the West. Our hearts went with that sustaining ball of fire, globe of rage, revenge, murder and relish. It set in the West, and it painted the sky red. Blood, blood, blood. Salamandastron lay there, lay where our secret desires, our secret vices buried themselves with the countless dead. 

I smiled, maybe at the sky, maybe at Clambrithe, or just maybe at the world at general. I will never know. I just know I smiled. 

_Get over it.___

It was my life then, after all. It is my life now. I never got over it. I still am trying. Getting over it. Getting over it all. 

He died. I am not sure why. 

I think he got over it at last. 

I think he committed suicide. 

_Clambrithe_, I whisper at night, just sometimes, just when the sky turns purple and I cannot bear to remember that blueness. _Jonathan, I wish I understood_. 

Sometimes even now I stare into the fire, trying to figure out just what it was he saw in the embers, sparking, living, dying, ash. My own subordinates never disturb me, and I cannot bring myself to infringe upon their personal space. Not the way Clambrithe did, not the way Jonathan saved me. 

_Get over it_. 

I have been trying. I will understand some day. Until the day I do, I will sit here, here by the generic fire, watching this generic sunset. I never watch the sunrise. Only sunset. 

Because it sets in the West. 

_Get over it.___

Because it sets in the West. 


	2. Definitions of Seniority

::Get Over It, Part II:: 

Disclaimer: Not mine. 

A/N: This thing just transformed itself into a sequel. Rest assured that my mentality had nothing to do with it: call it intuition. 

IMPORTANT NOTE: Here, I take two seasons to equate one year. 

* 

Rewind. Rewind. Back in time, back in time, back to when I thought that life was perfect. 

Clambrithe, admittedly, was one of my idols: only so many seasons older than me, yet so tremendously respected by his age group and every age group under his. Everybeast knew that the colonel favoured him with his attentions more than any other leveret, and they watched with envious eyes as Clambrithe cut through each trial and test with an ease that few others have ever known. He was old enough for me to consider an older brother of sorts, old enough for me to warrant him at least a level degree of respect. But definitely not old enough for me to ignore or pass off as base and outdated, definitely not old enough to be considered a true _officer_, in all senses of the word. 

Tren A'varn. That is who I am. I was one of those bland leverets removed from dramatic influence: never disruptive, devoid of all arrogance, completely plain. Nothing out of the norm, merely able to perform better than the slackers and deviants, had nothing notable under my name, never got pulled out by any of the mentors. Good disciplinary record, yes, definitely a domesticated fighter. Not made for the crazy suicide missions that they sent others on, no, this one was made for the patrols. An efficient, quiet, obedient killing machine of no extravagant mechanics at their disposal. 

I was not overly filled with that foolish ebullience, nor did I sink myself into the ideology of being an iconoclast. No, I was not one of those few dangerous candidates of edification, I was not one of duplicity. 

That was Clambrithe. Oh, nobeast knew, of course. If they knew, Clambrithe would have been exiled to an administrative position, doomed to spend his life pushing paper around a desk. No. Clambrithe fooled everybeast, himself included. Clambrithe was the catalyst of change. Clambrithe, one way or another, in the greatest of ironies, saw through that constant obfuscation of the truth surrounding Salamandastron, surrounding us. And I was there, for a while, to see how, to see why, to attempt to understand. I was the obdurate fool to him, to the system. 

I suppose that, in a manner of speaking, I was the closest Clambrithe ever came to calling a friend. Throw me his polemic conceptions of the last of his days, and I will answer you nothing, for I know nothing. But throw me his odd habits - the way he turns his head at such an angle, the way he smirks when he ought to frown, the way in which his eyes have the uncanniest way of changing colour at the oddest of moments - those I will interpret for you, to you, for that is all that I ever managed to gather off him, all that I ever managed to come even close to understanding. 

Well, retract your claws, Time, and let me speak. Remove the statements that seek to vilify him, remove the madness that recent days have brought. 

I suppose I was perhaps thirty-six seasons when I first joined Clambrithe's patrol. That was not so unusual an age to be thrust out into the world; leverets needed, sooner or later, to grow into their positions. It was widely seen as a good way to shove caustic reality into new recruits faces. Patrolling, something that everybeast on the mountain was used to, was the best place to start the slow deconstruction of perfection and innocence. So common a task was never seen as a "perilous" thing, yet there a young Green went, humming some tune to himself, and bloodshed changed everything. Every patrol killed. In fact, other than war, patrols are the most active means in which to remove obstructions, to exterminate, to murder, to destroy. Destroy what, you ask? I will never know. Perhaps vermin. Perhaps ourselves. It could be either, could be both. I just know that I tagged along, reverently worshipping those in seniority and attempting to appear as if I was calm about everything. 

To be truthful, I was scared out of my wits. I, a young hare, was being sent on Captain Jonathan Clambrithe's patrol into Mossflower. Jonathan Clambrithe, of all hares. 

Even then he had a reputation. Jonathan was about sixty seasons when he died. Not too old, but old enough to prove that he knew how to survive. Nobeast who was a Long Patroller beyond the age of forty-six seasons was naive. No officer was naive. Clambrithe was definitely not naive. He was forty-eight seasons then. A considerably young officer, and most assuredly a very young captain. 

Yet he was already so jaded, so terribly dead to the world. 

I remember it quite, quite well. He held himself with that strange arrogance which is never haughty, yet always aloof. He held himself with that same untouchable quality that the colonels, the brigadiers and majors carried themselves, yes, he walked with confidence and yet never with presumptuousness, and when he spoke his voice was always soft and never genteel. He was danger personified, a dormant, silent threat, watching from behind frozen eyes. He had all the decorum of an officer far beyond his rank, yet all the odd traits that denoted his youth. Or whatever was left of it. Clambrithe looked, to my eyes, like somebeast who never had a childhood. 

On that first day, I remember making no conversation, attempting instead to divulge myself with memories of younger days. How did Clambrithe act when he was my age? I was twelve years then, old enough to remember. Always the quiet one, yes, the introverted yet unusually gifted new recruit. The colonel behind him at all times, watching, inspecting, evaluating at all times. He never showed outward signs of pressure, never showed stress. There was burden in his eyes, yes, but he bore it like someone who either was too used to it or thought nothing of it. 

I shook myself from my reverie, and seeing my new commanding officer, decided that nothing had changed. 

Cold, always so cold. That was his charisma: his offsetting yet alluring chill. He never strictly kept people _out_, no, Clambrithe could interact and mingle and converse as well as the next garrulous hare. But neither did he invite, and his ice warded off the weak willed and the overawed. Never imposing, rather brooding, always present. Clambrithe was like a shadow, a shadow of thought and observance and muted magnificence waiting for its time. 

He would have made colonel. He should have made colonel. Clambrithe would have done it. Jonathan would have changed everything. 

Jonathan was never obvious. It took me a few seasons to pry my way in enough to actually see evidence that Jonathan ever existed. He was almost a separate entity, completely different from Clambrithe. Jonathan was intuitively brilliant while Clambrithe was the peak of academic excellence. The same person, the same hare, certainly, but the approaches of the two sides of Jonathan Clambrithe were utterly different, utterly contrasted. You might call him, or me, insane, but this is truly the only way I can ever hope to explain his odd mannerisms and his odd faith in his two selves. While these two personalities were so starkly dissimilar, they were still most _definitely_ the two _essential_ parts of the same person. And that was what made him so special, so strange, so utterly unsettling. 

Yes. That was Clambrithe. 

Finely tuned brilliance. Carefully nurtured, a careful painting of beautiful emotions on a static face. Well bred. Well defined. 

Always contradictory. 

One would have needed to _know_ Clambrithe in order to see how truly off balanced he was. As I speak, it may seem obvious that he was a hare of dilemma, but this comes only as a result of long years spent out in the wild, long years of interaction and long years of companionship. Truly, Clambrithe had that elaborate mask of his so seamlessly integrated into his manner of living and his manner of survival that few, few, _so few_ people truly could see past it. Even Vande may not have understood, but the colonel I have never encountered closely enough to speak for. But I will quote him, and speak for him. 

_Get over it_. 

Clambrithe was as Clambrithe was, there was no denying that. 

Clambrithe was an Officer, Lieutenant, Captain, Major, of the Long Patrol. Clambrithe was a Hare of Outstanding Conduct. Clambrithe was the personification of the typical Patroller. 

No. 

Not the typical. Rather the atypical. But nobeast knew that. 

Nobeast knew that, just as nobeast truly comprehended what the Long Patrol was, what we hares had become. 

Morbid mannequins of a chessboard of war and bloodshed. 

Morbid mannequins of our own making. 

This is the Long Patrol. 

That was Jonathan Clambrithe. 

This is what I am. 


	3. Your Sin and Mine

::Get Over It, Part III::  
  
  
Disclaimer: Clambrithe and Tren are both mine, intellectual property, baby. Brian Jacques may own the place and the patrol, but I own the plot and the characters. 

A/N: More morbid-contemplative from the little idolizer that is Tren. Oh, trivia: You really _do_ see that the hare accent disappears when they become serious. One very clear example is Clary from Mariel, that scene in which he educates Saxtus on the use of a bow. No accent. Look through the books, my suspicions that eventually developed this killer arc of fics all came from actions of the hares themselves. My fiction may not seem to fan-ish, but it is, in its own AU way. *laughs* 

* 

I miss him, in strange ways. I am not supposed to miss him. No one is. It should not be allowed. 

To remember is painful. We all know that. Putting the past to rest is a pastime none of us have the stamina or durability to do. We live with it by our sides, we live with it continuously, daily, every passing second. The past is made up of many things - death, blood, guilt. Certainly not topics of civilized conversation, but we hold them dear to us anyway. Maybe because death is the one thing that makes us feel alive, maybe because death is the one purging of the blood that coats our paws, dripping, dripping, always dripping. 

They say blood can never be washed off. 

That is a flagrant lie. 

Blood can _always_ be washed off. That alone is the one reason why we stay sane, why I am sane. Why Jonathan went insane. 

I will not be so presumptuous as to attempt to offer insight into his final thoughts, but that is my belief. I knew him - in my own private way - and I take pride and even a little arrogance from that. No one knew Jonathan Clambrithe. He was too dangerous. Too quiet. Too damn introspective. We loved him with our respect, with our adoring eyes, but never with our hearts. He was as he was. There is no dispute. He was a death trap, a means to get to an end. You never stood in his way. Clambrithe was on the path to ascension - whether to the Dark Forest or straight to Hellgates, none of us knew. 

Perhaps I was seen as foolish to approach him. Perhaps I am foolish. He keeps me in my own constant recantation of my life's values - they change every day. He kept me thinking even when he never addressed me, kept me watching him, waiting for his words. He was an enigma. 

And I miss him because of that. 

Days of murder are days of ennui. I learnt that long ago. And even the cold-blooded need their humour, their philosophy, their psychology. We all need the recalcitrant, those oddly reticent ones who keep us guessing, who keep us wondering, _why, why, why.___

Why, Clambrithe? Why? 

You taught me my vocabulary of irony. Sanguine, ensanguine, sanguinity. Such similar words - such eloquent difference. They call it _bloodlust_ in the Old language, the archaic terms that are lost to our current word forms. Sanguine. The colour of blood. Who would associate that which is optimistic to that which is bloodthirsty? 

You. Me. Every patroller from here to six feet under. Paint me with bloodied hands, if you ever paint me a portrait, paint me bleeding. Paint me with a silent smile - but paint me not as you would paint Clambrithe. 

Clambrithe would be painted painting blood, holding a brush of madness in his paws, calm, composed, completely mad. He would be painted smirking, frowning, laughing. Sardonic. But never pleasant. Never paint him, for he is not one for canvas or one for your words, images, strokes - or mine. Paint him the mercurial - paint him the saturnine - paint him not at all. 

Now I sound like the obsequious fool of servitude. And I am. 

Can I help it?  
  
As much as Clambrithe could. 

Ethos, pathos, logos. 

Disposition, empathy. Logic. 

He was never logical. I watched him and I never understood him. He was so complex, a bewildering character. A strange hare. 

We are so often seen as the cheerful perpetrators of intentional humour - we have spread that attitude only through careful execution. We never show ourselves to others - Redwallers especially. It is only when we become serious - and if one is prudent enough to observe us closely and to listen to use speak - that we become even slightly like ourselves again. Our "slang" disappears, our attitude changes. Very odd. The moment we step outside the mountain stronghold of lies, we become alternative realities of ourselves, grotesque mirror images. We laugh. We cry. We feel. We feel acutely, honing down on the emotions of others around us, thinking, thinking: exploitation, manipulation, information. We take it all in, we observe, we sacrifice. Of course, we never seem to do so. We have our own eccentrics - Hon Rosie from days long past. Colonel Clary, so stoic and so unbearably predictable. Brig Thyme - another predictable soul. They laughed. They ate so that their hearts were full of foreign love unheard of in Salamandastron. They joked in this superficial accent of wots, ballys and jolly-good-ha-ha-ha, made up, unreal, surreal, lies. 

We hide our victims well. We burn them, bury them, wash our paws clean of them. 

And they never know. The citizens of Mossflower live on in anonymous ignorance. And I envy them, and I pity them. 

How is it to know innocence as they know it? How is it to know terror beyond this interminable boredom? What is it to be helpless, to be a victim of death instead the instigator? Surely there is a difference between them and us. We... we are different. So much so. I want to know. I cannot. I must not. Who crosses over that strange border? Who can put down steel and shaft and say 'No more, no more. Death, remove your scythe'? Who has such courage? Who would dare? Not I, not I. I need this murder. I need it badly. I need it to keep me sane, to make me understand that all those previous lives were taken for a reason - the same reason I continue to kill. If I continue to kill, if I have not stopped, it means that I have seen no reason to do so, no shame, no guilt, no wrongness in taking lives. What reason? I do not know. But if I stopped... My mind would know, know as surely as my heart would: Sin. Sin, sin, sin. 

So we all keep training those after us as those before us trained us. We continue - none of us want to stop. The weaker ones are eliminated quickly enough, whether by death or by moral guilt and removal. The stronger ones stay on, the officers with the false smiles and the warm cheer. We might be dead inside, but for the sake of our animate corpses we preserver, too afraid, too cowardly. 

There is such irony in our existence. 

And it takes so much to make us see the irony. We are blind to it, walking around with our eyes wide shut, wanting to block out that which we are subject to and helpless to deny. Parsimony of emotion. 

Jonathan opened his eyes. 

I do not think he liked what he saw. 


	4. We All Sin Together

::Get Over It, Part IV:: 

Disclaimer: His, not mine. Mine, not his. 

A/N: Another serious take on Salamandastronian life. Anything that offends you? Well, take it in your stride and move on. It is, after all, my take. 

Ours is a society of few words. 

Take for example the females among us. It is not to say that they are not fit to join the patrols - fact is, many of our best captains and leaders were, and are, females. But as time went on, they strained towards being healers and medics, closing their eyes and their emotions. The more masculine aspect of the males in the patrols lead to their sense of honour: upholding the safety and integrity of Mossflower, never indulging in a dereliction of their duty. We drown our sorrows in the kill. Females? They drown their sorrows in ways I can never understand; most of them are content to be hare wives, waiting at home for husbands that they know are never coming back. 

To understand Clambrithe, one must first understand life on the Mountain. It is by no means a simple retelling of philosophies and rules, no, Salamandastron is far more complex than faked accents and dubious origins. 

As I said, ours is society of few words. As one grows in Salamandastron, one learns. There are no written rules of conduct for one's behaviour, no list of taboos. But they do exist, and they are significant, verily so. We are terribly different from any other species, in fact, any other form of "hare". The mountain hares, they are different, the plain hares, they are strange to us. We are a race on our own, and within our culture are strange rulings. 

Admittedly, our society is one of traditional and survival instinct. We depend on the unspoken teachings passed down from generation to generation, and these teachings all stem from the one philosophy that is the basis of our existence: Kill or be killed. We live because it is more difficult to remain alive than to merely fade away. There are plenty of ramifications that appeared as a result of killing and taking lives, but we have learned to adapt to them, work around them. 

We have to kill, you see. It is not so simple a matter as killing, wiping the blood away, then living the rest of your life in comparable peace and happiness. 

When you kill, your life is affected, those around you are affected, your family is affected. But when those around you kill, and your family kills, and your society is based on the concept of death and life, _your_ life is the one that is affected, and _you_ are the one who is changed. 

In Salamandastron, we kill. We kill on a daily basis: rooting out vermin and exterminating them. It might have been well if vermin were really just pests; mindless animals with no sense of mind or conscience. But it is evident, painfully evident, that vermin, too, have their idiosyncrasies, their lives, their need and will to survive. Perhaps there are _good_ vermin out there, vermin who are pure creatures corrupted out of necessity: if we strive to kill them, technically they, too, must strive to kill us. It is a vicious cycle; their lives ruined, then ours. But we have the upper hand; we, the hares of the Long Patrol, are viewed as the saviours of Mossflower, generous, kind, noble. We have a strong fort that has been held for countless centuries, and we have a system, an organization, a method that continues to be refined and made better. We do not kill each other because we first started out as a band of hares and a badger lord killing _others_. Vermin kill to really _survive_, for them, it is their life or another's. They do not have resources, or a permanent place to live. They have no source of income, or food, of water or shelter. They have to kill their neighbour so that they may take what the dead man no longer can. We? We kill as a _job_, not to survive. We kill because we can, not because we actually _have_ to. It is a duty. And when you call something a duty, you ergo have to _do it_. Therefore we say we must. 

Sometimes, I pity vermin. Given the chance, given food, water, a hearth and a fire, maybe they might change. Maybe it was our fault. 

But I do not want to think about that. It would drive me insane, and I have veered off my intended topic. 

Life on Salamandastron. One starts out as a leveret, to be trained as soon as one reaches an age old enough that one may hold a weapon without pointing the wrong end at one's self. Then these leverets are moved along, imbued with the teachings of Salamandastron: protect the weak, become the strong. Duty, duty, honour and death. That is your life to come, young one. I went through it, and perhaps it did me some good. We are taught to become creatures of nobility and honour, creatures of responsibility and fervour. Then, one moves up the ranks: naturally beginning as a runner; scouting the countryside and attempting not to get into any skirmishes. Then, if you were not rooted out because of your oddity or your lack of competence, you became a galloper or an attachment to a patrol, and your life's path was laid out in front of you. 

Oddity. That was the major factor. If one was seen as _dangerous_, one could no be put on the field. Ideas were always dangerous. Those who asked: why do we kill?, those were the ones who were dangerous. They thought too much, saw into things. Those were the few who could change everything, and at all costs they had to be kept under control. They were made into administrative machines; their keen minds dulled by paperwork and treaties. Those who remained were the smart, but not insightful, leverets and Greens: those who knew their way around strategy, but not the reason why they used strategies as such. 

Then there were those who were insightful, but were insightful enough that they kept their views to themselves. Those were the most brilliant, and the most volatile, of the lot. They were the ones with the most potential: they knew when to shut their mouths, and therefore they were already wise enough to get along with life. They could adapt. They could adjust. They could _understand_. They were the future leaders, the majors, the brigadiers, the colonels. They were the ones who would lead a new generation. 

Clambrithe was one of those. He saw into people like he looked through glass, and whatever he saw was advantageous to his constantly turbulent mind. He knew how to position people, to assign them, to lead and prod them, to manipulate them. And all the while, he was manipulating himself, a little pawn of the machine that ran all of us. 

He opened his eyes to that, and because of that, I call him a fool. 

One never speaks openly in Salamandastron about such topics. Death, the reason for killing, those were taboo subjects. You never mentioned them. It just _was._ You grew up, you sacrificed yourself, it was all honourable and righteous and fine. You never wondered why it was you, why it could not be someone else. That was just stupidity. 

Yes, in my society, one never mentions the obvious. Everything was traditional, tradition, truth. 

At least, that was what is _seemed_ to any outsider. 

We, the hares of Salamandastron, with our strange accents and our petty ways, our flippant attitudes and our even odder eating habits. 

Take a step into the heart of our mountain, and you would find yourself disillusioned. 

Our accents are faked. We speak as well as the next. Our petty ways are discarded once we become serious, a facade to hide deeper thoughts. Flippancy is generally frowned upon unless partaking in play, and eating habits... When one is out on the field for months on end, one learns the importance of rationing and living off the land. 

Odd that nobeast else notices, it may seem. But we have become inexplicably good at hiding our true selves from everyone, ourselves included. 

Reiteration of my previous point, perhaps, but it warrants emphasis. 

But our lack of eloquence regarding ourselves is a farce. We decline seeing things that could taint our reputation, but those things are the wheels and cogs of our society, the things that keep us running. 

There are always hidden facets. I have seen them in the dark, obscured from sight. Fearful things, dark things, heinous things. 

It is not uncommon, no, not uncommon at all, for two to take comfort in hushed, hurried embraces while on patrol. Sex is disregarded, most of the time, turned on a blind eye. When you live next to your friend, your compatriot, your secret lover, you tend to be able to ignore the most close of intimacies surprisingly well. Gender does not even matter. You do it to forget, not to remember, and so when the sun comes up the next day, it never happened. 

We are not liberalists, no. I have seen homosexuals thrown out of the mountain without second glance from the upper echelons or the badger lord. You do it, you do what you please, but we implore you, forget about it and do not try to take it any further. If you must, you must, but your actions are your own and when you are not supposed to speak, you do not. If you continue? You leave. Your life is thrown away, and you follow soon after. We send our regards to your personal hell, but we do not care. You broke the rules. You tainted our record. You stained black what blackness that is supposed to be _white_. Deviants are not accepted here. 

Neither is it unheard of for blood to be spilt for no reason, one's own blood. Somebeasts simply cannot take the stress, and Clambrithe stands as a perfect example. Granted, it never happens too often, because troublesome cases are usually spotted and dealt with long before they are given the leeway to ripen, but, as I said, it is not _unheard_ of. 

None of this makes it to the light of day. They are secrets of the night, our secrets, not the Long Patrol's. They may come as a side-effect of _being _in the Long Patrol, but they are _our_ secrets and not meant to be made known. If you created or did something worthy of being kept quiet and kept well, you very well _kept_ it and lived with it. 

I have lived through all of this. Clambrithe lived through all of this. 

Why am I so insightful? Why do I see into things, and why am I here if I mentioned so adamantly that those who follow intuition are so quickly removed from active duty? 

Because Jonathan showed me. 

He opened this one terrible door and shoved me through, and before I knew why he had done it or why I had gone along, it was far too late. I became his little ardent follower, his pupil of philosophy. With his actions, he showed me his thoughts, and though he never spoke of them, I knew. I knew just as well as he did. We were both masters of speaking the unspoken, just the same as all these hares around me. He and I had come to some sort of mutual understanding. A friendship based on nothing but wordless moments by the open fire. 

It kept me sane. 

It drove _him_ insane. 

It is times like these I wonder if I have already been driven mad. But the more I try to understand Clambrithe, the more I try to understand myself. 

Like I said. Even though he is dead, Jonathan Clambrithe continues to make me think and reconsider and ponder and go absolutely crazy. 

It is this madness that saves me. 

It is this madness that saves us all.


End file.
